A Month Late and a Holler Short: MoveOn.org Descends on Faneuil Hall in Support of Universal Healthcare

It would have been an ordinary incestuously amplified liberal orgy today in Faneuil Hall, where MoveOn.org activists held a “vigil for people suffering under the current healthcare system.” The quintessential progressive mob made the trek from Cambridge and Jamaica Plain – mostly shorthaired women and scraggly men with sandals and eccentricities. But then along came a dimwitted drunken tourist from Memphis and his savage wife, and things got interesting.

“Say no to Marxism,” ordered the sweaty southern gentleman, his Hawaiian shirt flapping in the light wind. “You’ll all see what I mean soon enough,” he continued, before accusing me of being a member of the liberal media (apparently – 90 percent of journalists are on the left, and it has nothing to do with the fact that we’re for the most part well-educated). Unfortunately, that grizzly fellow was the only resounding highlight; beside him the entertainment was limited to folks telling personal stories about our broken healthcare system. Touching stuff, but hardly adequate ammunition for a spat of this magnitude.

It’s going to take more than a few hundred heads toting oak tags and canvas bags to counter the strong lead that right wing fabrication factories have in this particular debate. Sometimes you have to fight dumb with dumber; where are the picket signs charging that right-wing aggravation agents are promoting homicidal inaction? I assume such accusations were left at home to keep it classy – not because they’re unwarranted.

If there’s a liberal organization that I expect to play a bit dirty but within the rules, it’s MoveOn. The group was formed to combat the sort of slander that we’re hearing these days across Town Hall America. Surely the descendants of Bill Clinton apologists and Howard Dean fanatics are capable of waging guerilla warfare. But they can’t do it without young people, and it looked like a Vietnam protest reunion down by the Sam Adams statue today.

As a reporter at an alt-weekly, I’m well aware of how angry liberals get. In fact I’d bet that some readers who I inadvertently described above are sharpening their pencils right now to scold me for advocating hostility. I welcome all that highbrow bullshit, but I also wish that some of that aggression would go toward shouting down some tea party dingbats next time they congregate in Boston. Think I’m wrong? Just consider that I was the only reporter at Quincy Market today, and how every news van in town rolls up every time those dumb bastards drop a press release.